Their dream home was a scam

One family may have to forgo Christmas this year after falling prey to an ever-growing rental scam in the Brockville area.

Natalie Lowery and her husband Tim Moores recently moved to the area from Calgary and had their sights set on Brockville. Lowery thought she had found the perfect home on Reynolds Drive, but instead she was scammed out of $1,000 and learned the place she thought was her dream home was never even up for rent.

“I can’t even think about putting presents under the Christmas tree right now,” Lowery told The Recorder and Times.

“I think what’s happening is they’re preying on people who are lower income and looking for places that are available sooner than later.”

Lowery, Moores and their daughter recently moved to Eastern Ontario from Calgary because they missed their family and immediately began to search on Kijiji and other rental websites for somewhere to live.

They found what they thought was a great place for their family – the posting included four to five pictures of the inside of the house, and also pictures of a man, woman and child at a local church.

They claimed to come from a “Christian background,” Lowery said, and that they were more concerned about finding someone who would really take care of their property than they were about the money. The reason they were renting the place was they apparently were transferred to Guelph for work.

Interested parties were told to go look at the exterior of the home and to “peek in the windows” and if they liked what they saw, to let them know.

“It just seemed like the perfect little house,” Lowery said.

Then they were told “quite a few more people” were interested and in order to secure the home, they would have to send last month’s rent.

Lowery said they seemed like a trustworthy family and their story seemed credible, so she did what they asked and sent close to $1,000 to secure the home last Wednesday.

“I was just so excited about finding us a house for our family, I didn’t even think about the possibility of it being a scam,” she said.

She soon realized what happened, and has since been in contact with the police. But there is little they can do because the scam artists communicated via text through an app that allowed them to input any phone number they wanted in order to appear to be from the area.

They still haven’t found a place to stay and they’re currently staying at a motel in Carleton Place. Because Lowery initiated the money transfer, she was not protected through her bank.

Like salt in a wound, when she re-started her search in Brockville, she found several other homes she was interested in renting but she received the same response.

“I applied to a couple more ads, and they tried the same thing,” she said.

“When they replied to me, it was a different name and email, but it was basically the same line: They had been transferred to Texas, they didn’t care about the money, they come from a Christian family. They’re doing it on more than one site. More than just Kijiji.

“I just want to make sure nobody else gets scammed.”

Brockville police are aware of the scam, according to Acting Staff Sgt. Tom Fournier, who said it has made its way to Brockville within the last few years.

“It’s scary,” he said.

“The last couple years it’s been more and more frequent.”

The police recently put out a few tips to avoid being caught in this situation:

- Avoid ads that are too good to be true; ads for apartments or houses with rents significantly below market value are almost always lures used by scam artists.

- Always see the rental in person before sending any money. It is not recommended to do business with an overseas landlord.

- Dealing locally is best. The safest way to deal is in person and face to face. Be suspicious if the prospective landlord only wants to communicate using electronic means, is currently out of the country or residing overseas or far from where the apartment is located.

- Don’t visit prospective rental units alone.

For more information on fraudulent rental scams, see the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre: www.antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca.